Us and Them
by Silberias
Summary: Bonnie's deathbed is in his arms, and on his terms. Damon would have it no other way.
1. Chapter 1

She is screaming when he bursts through the window, coming up like death behind her attacker. Grasping hands hold firm, one upon the shoulder and the other taking hold of hair close to the scalp—a heart stopping breaking and tearing sound fills the air—and her screams increase in volume as the body fell and the head remains aloft.

Silence permeats the blood splattered room, however, when he eases her into unconsciousness so that he can deal with the still conscious head in his hand.

"I've told you all before, she is mine and she is not for hunting."

After exploding the head, he gently picks her up and takes her to Meredith's so that he can clean up her bedroom.

"Bonnie?" his clean, damp fingertips caress her face to wake her.

"Yes?"

"You did the right thing, precious, he would have killed you."

"You killed him, though."

"Yes, but I've told them over and over again that you're mine—mine to drink from, mine to toy with if I choose, and mine to kill if it's ever decided that you must die. They are not to touch you, and those who don't believe me must meet similar ends to that one. It's a fact."

"To you," she murmurs, turning her head away from him.

Damon leans forward to press a kiss to her shoulder, not pushing the issue with her, and leaves. She is weak and doesn't need him to overly excite her by arguing with her.

* * *

He finds her standing in the sun. It's a bright day, and she's long since left the quiet bench beneath dappled sunlit shadows. It hurts his eyes, but he bares it for her. Her form, always slight and pliant and—to him—sexy, seems translucent. Her body is not beautifully thin, and her form is not beautifully curvaceous. This particular human being is dying, and is not far from the end.

In much the same way as light groping in public, to humans, is slightly erotic, taking a tiny nibble at her bare throat in full sunlight nearly undoes him. In the past few hundred years, Damon has learned to appreciate every type, age, and health of blood. The blood of the dying has always fascinated him, for the slight watering of the mouth for more, long after all traces have been swallowed and cleaned from his gums, is tantalizing. Hers tastes divine—there is a reason vampires have hunted her extensively in the past few years…despite his repeated dismantling of their skulls to prove his claim on her.

Bonnie is dying of grief, although none but he will tell her that as he whispers the truth to her now. The loss of friends, in response to her druidism, and the loss of innocence by way of life experience have conspired to stress her weak heart and immune system past the brink. Damon stands behind and supports her as he muses on his plan to aid her—absently nuzzling and licking the seeping wound on her neck.

"Precious, will you let me save you?" her eyes are closed against the bright sunlight, her head resting lifelessly against his shoulder, and he checks to see if she is still conscious.

"How are you going to save me from myself, Damon? Using your method I will look and feel like this forever," she murmurs.

"First I give you enough blood to begin to recover your strength, and when you are recovered, I will change you and take you far away from all of these memories. It's best for someone like you to have a change of scenery at a time like this."

"Can't you take me away and then work your magic?" her voice is soft, intermittent. It's only because she thinks the words as she speaks that he hears the entire sentence at all.

"Not for a short while, at the very least, cara, you are far too weak to do any sort of travelling" he says gently into her ear as he hoists her up and starts walking out of the sunlight and into the shadows of the forest.

* * *

Damon takes her Richmond, a bigger city which is easier to blend into. It's the bigger cities that people don't notice the pale young man and the withered redhead he supports—that boy is pale from taking care of a dying friend, they reason, and move on with their lives. Humans were a superior species, sometimes, to vampires. If one spoke to a biologist this would be because vampires did not reproduce sexually—in the biological sense—and humans did. No, to Damon, humans had a modicum of technical superiority because they cared for others of their species—it was something he had found they couldn't repress easily. Vampires rarely cared for the "greater good," of their kind, usually only for one or two for their entire lifetimes.

By this time she would have faded and died, but Damon religiously gives her sips of his blood in order to prolong her life—sometimes secretly stashed in a cup of red wine, otherwise worked into the times he gives in and kisses her for hours on end. He also feeds her constantly, taking her to fancy restaurants—not to show off, but for the rich food and tiny portion sizes.

Her body begins to gain definition again.

In the evenings she can't sleep due to the growing presence of vampiric blood in her body, and he allows her to stay up with him for as long as she wants or can. He never lets her watch the local news, however, because her family and friends have reported her as missing—likely kidnapped. Snatched in broad daylight from a park frequented by mothers and young children. Her face on the television is splashed on every channel as the ethereally beautiful Elena and the dark eyed Meredith plead for her safe return.

Damon, if Bonnie is sleeping, watches the news and smiles into Bonnie's hair—and says to the faces in the screen, "_No_."


	2. Chapter 2

Okay, you lured the bunny back. Give yourselves a pat on the back ^_^

* * *

Despite his lacing of her wine and other things, he had yet to take more than a mouthful of her blood. It made him giddy, enhancing the world around him and bringing every edge into sharp detail. It was seeing the world in such definition that it was a near hallucination. Changing her would have been very difficult for any other vampire than himself. Vampires who succumbed to that giddiness killed the human more often than not—which was why there were so few of her kind that made the change.

The day was, taking the play farther than he normally did, painfully sunny. It was agony on his eyes, even with the expensive double coated sunglasses he typically wore. It suited his purposes perfectly. She would wake up at just twilight—enough time to assess her mental state, for the sun to set, and to take her on her first hunt.

"You're going to do it today aren't you?" she'd asked. Her voice sounded like singing.

He didn't veer from his course, made no answer—he packed a picnic basket with a dagger and forgot the silverware, a silver ring with a lapis stone instead of napkins, a thick blanket instead of a table cloth.

* * *

It's like watching a kitten, blue eyes barely unstuck, amble in a new world. That world has always been there, the kitten knows instinctively, but has never been visible before. The little nest he's made for the two of them—somewhere where he can rest and where she can be safe—hasn't changed a whit since the day before, the week before, a year. But she has opened her eyes—they've come unstuck, wide and uncertain.

He wouldn't have changed her if she hadn't been able to handle it. It's something he knew she was ready for—he has nursed her wounds, physical and mental, and her singed whiskers have re-grown stronger and in abundance. Bonnie is a new vampire, but she is still Bonnie—with eyes pried open by one who loves her.

Damon lets her watch the news now—the news shows have passed over the one-year disappearance of a young woman from Fell's Church. And they are in New York, anyway. He played it safe, however, and waited it out. He's not stupid or naïve enough to believe that she would stay with him if her friends thought she'd been kidnapped.

She would have come back, of course, but Damon didn't want her to leave in the first place. There was always a small thin chance—like seeing Jesus on CNN—and Damon hated small thin chances.

The breath had left her body so easily—it had wanted to escape for so long, even as he'd helped her back to health he could hear a rattle no medical science would ever hear. Mortals breathed that rattle out for the rest of their lives after they'd come so close to death—regardless of what that death would have been. It was the memory of death, of what it might have felt like, of the end of suffering. It made any subsequent near-hits that much more likely to happen.

Did dating a vampire count as a near-hit or a near-miss? Damon didn't trouble himself, it wasn't his department to think of things like that. That was Stefan's calling, and there was a reason it was.

Damon didn't dare leave the continent with her in such a state, newly changed, just as he couldn't have left for Europe with a mortal-Bonnie in tow—he'd had to change her in order to get her in a place where he _could_ get her off the continent. It was a vicious cycle. He had to teach her how to be a vampire and to be herself—not get lost in the emotion of it like Stefan did. There was plenty of time for emotion, it came with living forever, but it meant that he couldn't let her wallow in it.

Not that she wallowed—she was like a weeks-old kitten. She gamboled on tottering feet, pretended to bite and scratch, and curled up purringly happy—that's what Bonnie did.

* * *

The first time she sees a mirror—a bona fide mirror—since her change is when he takes her to "obtain" a proper falsified passport. They can't have Bonnie McCullough traipsing around Europe (If Damon were solo, he'd simply fly, but Bonnie is a decade away from that ability, despite how fast she's learning), and so they get a Gwyneth Woods to do it for her.

The mirror is small, a foot-by-foot affair. No bigger than it needs to be, as it's just to make sure you don't have spinach in your teeth for the passport photo. The scratches on the surface tell it's age, since before anyone besides Damon was born—sixties at the youngest.

Bonnie had previously only caught glimpses of herself reflected in nighttime sights like glass windows and still water (Damon envied her unease as she crossed running water, he only had a few inter-continental trips left in him it disturbed him so). Her hair was dulled and darkened in these reflections, her pallor increased because of the night, her eyes black.

But not so now.

It's six thirty at night—more than an hour after quitting time at the official office, in it's own wing to the side of the post office. The lights shine haggard shadows into Damon's face—it's not easy to train a fledgling such as her, and he can see why creators throughout history often left their progeny after a matter of weeks—but her face is clear and full, her cheeks tinted the barest rose from the generous donation of the banker at sunset.

She's obviously shocked at her own appearance.

Her hair has changed so slowly that only Damon has noticed—it started when he started adding blood to her diet almost a year ago, he only knows because when he looks back on his memories of her those red waves were deliciously carrot colored. Now they shone a lively cherry, the blonde highlights given by the sun having given way to a darkness not to blame only on lack of sunlight.

Damon knows this is because of the vampire in her, just as his own hair is because of the vampire in him. It was the mutation, virus, whatever he called it that particular Tuesday—it changed subtle things, to self-identify to the world. Like a snake with markings for poison—If red touches black you're an okay Jack, if red touches yellow you're a deadly fellow.

She doesn't turn and stare at him accusingly—he has no use for mirrors and doesn't keep them—but her wonder is obvious. Bonnie McCullough, witch, was a bona fide vampire complete with otherworldly looks of extreme colors and dazzling textures. Her hair, brushed until it gleamed, framed that heart shaped face—out from which stared two dancing brown eyes, the pupils too large to be human.

"Your passport should be done in a few weeks, Ms. Woods," the teller's voice, dreamy and content with Damon's hypnosis, shoots through the air in a monotone. Bonnie grins, her canines just threatening to grow, before Damon shakes his head. This was the Bonnie who Matt would have killed—by accident, of course, as disbelief is always an accident—and his brother and Elena would have trampled, and the moment her life had left her body, she was all _his._

_

* * *

And how did we like it? _Review?


	3. Chapter 3

Okay, I think that there's at LEAST one more chapter after this one. The bunny bit me really hard with this one. I listened to a lot of Bowie for this. Specifically his rock stuff, spanning the period he's been active as a songwriter and musician.

* * *

There was a modern ballad on the radio—Damon could hear it blaring in tiny speakers from the first floor of the building, drifting up six flights of stairs to the roof access he was situated on. It was about a tragic youth—and a wall of sound to separate. Struggling for reality. At least that's what the ballad termed it—and that was only what Damon could hear. He wanted to dance to it—but that wasn't an option right now.

Bonnie, draped over his shoulder and enchanted with the parade below, had left the radio on again in their apartment. It wasn't really their apartment—more the apartment of a well-to-do bachelor lawyer who never noticed his two roommates. Damon was training Bonnie by having her change how the man perceived them—Damon took care of the rest of the tenants who might see the odd comings and goings of two wan young people.

It was nearly time, he knew, his hand pressed over hers over his collarbone. Stefan was going to look up from the crowd on the street in a minute or so—when the psychic energy of the humans pressed around him had quieted. Elena wouldn't think to look until Stefan gasped—the flurry of red curls cascading over the ledge and two pale faces emerging out of the darkness would be hard to miss with a vampire's eyes.

Bonnie giggled.

Damon had chosen her favorite city in the UK for this reunion—he'd fallen severely ill during the plane trip nearly a decade before, and had decided to remain confined to Europe, Asia, and Africa rather than endure that pain again. Bath was a nice sort of place—quaint and boring. On every trip to Britain he thanked human engineering and the Chunnel.

"We just _have_ to go, Damon. It's a celebration of Jane Austen, and there will be movies and reenactments and it will be just dreadful and romantic." Damon had fiercely tamped down on the urge to hiss in frustration at her—that was something he'd only just barely trained her out of, if barely counted as eight years ago, and he didn't of all things want a relapse in her by doing it himself.

The ease at which his Bonnie, with the skill of a mostly grown (but not) tabby cat—slitted eyes open wide into ovals so rounded they were nearly circular; hardened dagger claws tucked softly and sweetly into silent feet—inserted the suggestions into the minds of her former friends, had pride swelling up in him as an embarrassing show of affection. He'd caught a poetic looking street performer just for her as a reward and pat on the back.

"Elena—Bo—Damon—L'k!" Stefan's strangled panic rose only barely above the clutter of machinated noise—but both Damon and Bonnie caught it.

"He's gonna have a fit, Damon, look," Bonnie pointed with the hand not captured by Damon. She didn't point at Stefan, but at Matt. Matt who stood with shoulders tensed, human anger and jealousy convincing his muscles of the possibility of the six storey climb—Matt whose eyes burned with hatred, betrayal, and another vaguely lost notion. Of course that was only Damon projecting those feelings on the man—he had no way of knowing for sure without looking…

Ah, yes, indeed, his affinity for emotion was dead on.

"Don't kill him, Damon, he'll haunt you _forever_," Bonnie whispered into his ear, lips brushing the cartilage with every syllable, and Damon's own shoulders relaxed. He didn't need jealousy to tell him what he was and wasn't capable of. Bonnie's laughing warning also rung true—she was psychic after all. And she'd grown strong under his care of her and from his care about her.

Exponentially so.  


* * *

Elena's accusing eyes rarely accomplished what she probably wanted them to do. Luckily for her she had caught one of the most obliging and weak-willed vampires to have ever lived, and she held him under her thrall easily. She and Stefan were happy—and Damon couldn't laugh his way into having either of them understand that Bonnie had him under that same thrall. No—most definitely not—not the same thrall, he'd be damned again if he were as lovesick and idiotic as his saintly brother.

Damon couldn't—and moreover wouldn't—explain to them: a vicious desire to have her and protect her from death, a want so deep and painful that at turns he'd hated her for it and so strong that he'd killed her to fulfill it. Bonnie was hurt by the group's inability to accept that Damon wasn't going to be loving and attentive in the same way that Alaric was to Meredith or Stefan was to Elena. She didn't show that hurt—but Damon knew, and it made him angry.

"We thought you'd killed yourself—" "You left so suddenly, without any note. We…" "I blamed myself, I," "She and I fought over whether we had driven you away," "we thought you were dead."

Damon coolly observed their self-centered conversation, swirling around Bonnie like an emptying toilet—or a whirlpool, if he were being poetic and not a misanthrope. As her eyes misted over, glassy and distant—Damon-like—he watched as she cried vampire tears that Stefan never knew how to cry (he had clung to his humanity for so long that he didn't know how to truly be a vampire properly). Damon was about to grab her and make a run for it—it had worked in years past, why not now?—when Matt brought up the one subject he should have known not to.

"But don't you know he's a monster?"

And the room was very still. And very quiet.

Except, that is, for the panicked breathing of Matt as Bonnie was forcibly restrained by Damon. Her eyes were full of demon madness and righteous anger, her fingers—tipped by trimmed and elegant nails—straining at the end of tendons which stretched and contorted all the way up her bare arms; she was reaching as far forward as she _possibly_ could. Damon noted that she would have done well in the attack, going for the eyes with one hand and the throat with the other. It was a pose he'd taught her after she'd accidentally (i.e. on purpose) killed a vampire hunter rather clumsily. She got points for an excellent form, but he had to dock her some for poor timing--it was B+ in his estimation.

_Bonnie_.

The sharp tang of fury answered his query.

* * *

Yep, and that is promptly where the bunny let go of my brainstem.

Review?


	4. Chapter 4

So sadly this is the last chapter of this fic, which I will explain at the end.

* * *

Bonnie was going to kill something, she was on the verge of ripping one of Damon's arms off actually, and she wasn't going to wait much longer to do it. With a glare at their audience (Matt almost didn't count, he was going into shock), Damon wrenched her around to get a better grip around her waist as he carefully reached out to gather her arms up. Bonnie's head thrashed around wildly, contorted with rage. There wouldn't be any reasoning with her in this state, this was only going to be cleared up if she killed something.

"Damon, no, she shouldn't—" Elena's voice, plaintive and Stefan-luring, cut into his focus. She and Stefan were supporting Matt (whose eyes were rolled back in his head now), and it was obvious neither of them understood the gravity of the situation. Stefan at least had the stones to not flinch at the howls of fury Bonnie was unleashing on their ears.

Dragging his lady love out of the window would have been indelicate at best, and Bonnie was certainly not taking things the best. Although the lacerations were nothing compared to wounds he'd had over the centuries, Bonnie had blinded one of his eyes for the night with an errant (or was it?) nail to his face. His black clothing gleamed with devil-light in the streets, his blood shining a wet scarlet in dribbling patches from his throat to his shirt and jacket. The smell was waking up a bloodlust inside him which was normally under a tight control of regularity, and with a rueful smile he knew there would be death tonight.

* * *

After she'd drained half a family of vampire hunters dry, Bonnie came to her senses. Damon was neatly finishing up the other half—he sometimes found that the best way to make her smile was to vaguely appeal to some feminist notion of "halfsies" or whatever she chose to call it. A quiet "Shit," was all he got by way of notice that she'd calmed down. Her eyes, dancing and beautiful, shone out from her blushed face—she looked like a cherub.

"Damon?"

"Yes, Cara?" Her face was mournful and beautiful, her face gazing into that of her prey. The young man, barely finished with being gangly, had the startings of a beard to show his adulthood. Vampire hunters liked to differentiate like that. Bonnie's eyes were nearly closed, veiling herself from him and from her grief. She looked like Angelo's Pieta, Cupid's Bow mouth carefully neutral.

"I can't talk to them again after this. They think they get to decide who is a monster and who is not, when only God can decide that," the Catholic in Damon agreed with her. He didn't bother asking that Catholic why it agreed with her, but he suspected that it was because it was the Catholic in Bonnie who was saying such things. If Damon were a more forgiving person he would have countered her argument that they were only doing what they thought was right, and that the truth would out, as the case were. But he wasn't.

"Precious, tell me what to do." Bonnie looked up with her Mary's eyes in his. His dead heart ached for her: she'd wanted so badly for the planned reunion to rebuild bridges in disrepair, and he'd tried so hard to give that to her. Her eyes flicked down and away from his, focusing for a fleeting moment on the almost-man in her arms before she dropped him and gently picking up the youngest of the bunch. A girl, twelve at most, with springy black curls and a stubborn chin. Damon knew what she wanted, and, if it meant stepping on toes and damning himself further, he was going to do it.

It was against New World codes to change a human under the age of fourteen. There were no such codes in Europe, but that didn't mean it wasn't frowned upon to a murderous degree. Luckily for them, Damon was widely regarded as highly mentally unstable and few and far between were the vampires who would challenge his decisions. The girl was only just dead, her cheeks were still warm.

The End.

* * *

So this was originally only supposed to be one chapter long. And then I couldn't help myself. After the last chapter I put up people kept on kind of just responding to it. I'm sorry I am too lazy to reply to a lot of your reviews--please know that they are what made me chase down the plot bunny this evening and finish this story up. It was a tricksy bunny.

In my old age, as well as the post-Twi-fucking-retarded-light Sa-up-yours-ga, I've grown a strong distaste for vampires being able to have children. I know, if any of you have read B & D, that I used to but you have to know several things about that: I was 12/13 when I wrote that, and now I'm 20. I also wrote that before Twilight was out/popular/etc, so it was purely of my own invention back then. So in this fic to give Bonnie and Damon the family they will need in the future (kind of a lesson learned from poor Armand, Anne Rice's vamp, who only had his lady love and grew dissatisfied with her despite their love) to get by and still love one another, I gave them someone who was being trained to defend herself. Someone who isn't a child and isn't an adult.

In answer to some questions I might see coming up (THIS IS OPTIONAL, READ IF YOU DIDN'T GET ANYTHING):

Damon and Bonnie won't be talking to the Gang for at least a few decades.

They most definitely won't be talking to them until Matt has passed away, which means it will be like half a century before they do that.

I was trying to describe Bonnie AS Michelangelo's Pieta, as well as the young vampire hunter she'd just killed. Google "pieta michelangelo" if you've been living under a rock and have never seen that sculpture. If that's not proof God made Michelangelo's hands, I don't know what is. I'm only half-joking.

I abbrieviated Michelangelo's name to Angelo because in my personal VD's 'verse, Damon died in 1509/1510 which would put Michelangelo at around 40. I like to think that in some way they knew one another, like Michelangelo took Damon in for a short time after his change. A new and better father figure sort of relationship, which would be why Damon thinks of his old friend with a nickname.

Bonnie and Damon are adopting the little girl, and Damon is going to change her.

Because LJ Smith has separate rules for her Night World and her VD's vampires, I set up different rules for them here. In the Americas, Damon would be in serious trouble for changing the girl, but since they're in Europe and he's a European vampire, he's A-Okay.

* * *

One last review for old times sake?


End file.
